Heres a few things to concider...The paint is very transparent ,right?so maybee its not a water problem at all (check this by sticking an air fittiing in the hose end with the compressor at full capasity and blowing it directly on some glass ,if theres any water getting through the filters this will tell you right off you'll see the water hitting the glass....) if theses no water getting through could the car have had water get on it and dry leaving water spots ?Then they are simply showing through the thin paint?
I've found that solvent based W&G doesnt remove some stains as well as the water based W&G sometimes you cant get something off at all with the solvent based and it'll wipe right off with the water base,so if your using solvent base W&G that could explain the spots and the showing throuh can be explained by thin transparent paint....I wouldnt even worry about that right now,but keep it in the back of your head for later...
Your car will need to be sanded but i'd go with 600-800
on the spots that went down to the grey primer you can try using half as much reducer to make the base thicker and cover better.....

Heres a few things to concider...The paint is very transparent ,right?so maybee its not a water problem at all (check this by sticking an air fittiing in the hose end with the compressor at full capasity and blowing it directly on some glass ,if theres any water getting through the filters this will tell you right off you'll see the water hitting the glass....) if theses no water getting through could the car have had water get on it and dry leaving water spots ?Then they are simply showing through the thin paint?
I've found that solvent based W&G doesnt remove some stains as well as the water based W&G sometimes you cant get something off at all with the solvent based and it'll wipe right off with the water base,so if your using solvent base W&G that could explain the spots and the showing throuh can be explained by thin transparent paint....I wouldnt even worry about that right now,but keep it in the back of your head for later...
Your car will need to be sanded but i'd go with 600-800
on the spots that went down to the grey primer you can try using half as much reducer to make the base thicker and cover better.....

there were a few water stains, but I am seeing these ALL over. I didn't have close to this much staining in the sanded epoxy. I use solvent W&G and you sure are right about what solvent won't remove and water will. I have 2 squirt bottles I keep with me when I clean: my solvent W&G and a bottle of dishsoap water. The water instantly removes bug spots while the wg won't touch em.

Barry has looked at these pics and he believes they are water spots from air getting through the lines. After going over my line filtration and dessication system, it's entirely inadequate, not to mention I only had about 8 feet total of line between the compressor and filters. Tonight I plumbed 20 foot of 1/2" copper coil into the line to help cool the air and condense the water, and give more distance for the air to travel before hitting my filters.

I also bought a dessicant hose to get me through this job, but once it's done I'm going to put in a DeVilbiss filtration system.

I wish I could draw a picture of my "thumper tank" and post it for you but one of my best water traps is actually a vertical compressor tank (60 gal) my compressed air coming out of the first tank goes into the top of this tank and down a copper tube to about a 1/2" from the bottom of the tank the air then travelsback up the tank and outnice and cool ,the nice part about the thumper tank is the more water it traps the better it works. the water in the tank is the filter the air gets through but the water and debri cant.basicly it works like a water pipe or bong ...anyone can make one (I did learn SOMETHING in high schoo) and its one of the cheapest (and BEST )water trap filters there is....also, basicly, ALL the water trap filters work on this principal.I have another water trap filter (wall mounted) with a clear bowl but I never have to drain it (because of the thumper) and the elements in are as clean as the day I bought it. you should build yourself a thumper tank and all your water problems should go away...
The second best filter I have is the motor gaurd paper element filter which goes last and before the regulator when I bought it it was only 50.00 but the filter eliments were about 30.00 if I remember right but a roll of toilet paper is what everyone uses in its place (also very cheap) ...a dessicant filter would go before this filter and is also very inexpensive to make...Theres really no need to spend a ridiculas amout of money (500-up) to filter air ....Those devilbis filter systems are pretty though... and quick to hook up

Ok, I've got the entire car scuffed down and will be ready to reshoot this morning. This time I'm going in with a purple-capped LPH400, 20 feet of half inch copper coil between my compressor and booth air, and a desiccant snake.

By this evening I will be very happy or extremely pissed and defeated. Let's hope it's the former.

Ok, I've got the entire car scuffed down and will be ready to reshoot this morning. This time I'm going in with a purple-capped LPH400, 20 feet of half inch copper coil between my compressor and booth air, and a desiccant snake.

By this evening I will be very happy or extremely pissed and defeated. Let's hope it's the former.

You will be fine Josh, just think of every panel as part...not a complete. I've seen painters that sometimes get overwhelmed by painting a whole car but, they can paint one panel without a problem...trust me, if you can paint a panel...you can paint a car.

Walk in with what I call, Positive Painter's Head or PPH as listed on all your tech sheets..(don't look for it there, I lied...it's just a term I made up...LOL), what I mean by that is painting can be as much an attitude as an art...it's almost like that dog down the street, if you show fear, the dog goes nuts, if you have any reservations about painting a complete and you concentrate on what might go wrong, it will. Focus of each panel, one at a time and you will be fine.

I'm really having trouble getting this LPH dialed in, even after going around the entire car once. I'm just getting poor coverage, and feel like it's spraying really dry. I've been talking to Barry but still having issues.

I have my wall regulator wide open, between 20-25 psi at the gun with trigger pulled. I've been told to keep gun about 5 inches from panel. Have fluid 2-2.75 turns out and I'm constantly adjusting the fan. I hardly am getting anything out, and when I adjust the fan so it's a nice even pattern, my fan is probably only 7 inches or so. When I adjust the fan wider it gets heavy at the top and bottom and thin in the middle, and is really thin on the fluid.

Also the air sounds really weak coming out of it (I have the air adjustment screw on the gun itself wide open). My DeVilbiss is like a full blown air burst when I spray it and this feels like there's hardly anything coming out. The spray is going on pretty dry, not peely, but I think it's still dry.

Still also getting some striping despite my best efforts. I went perpendicular to my existing stripes. I did well on one half of my hood and thought I found it, but then it all fell apart on the second half of the hood.

At this point I'm worried I'm just wasting paint. My booth is small so it is difficult for me to see just how even and consistent the coats are going on. And again, the coverage is poor.

I'm so tempted to taking it into dutchboys in town (they spray SPI) and telling them, here's my base, here's my SPI Universal clear, here's your based car, make it better than mine and I want to watch you do it. I don't want to give up on it but at the same time I wonder if I'd learn something from this, or see them do something that suddenly makes sense. My level of frustration has a price to it as well and it's very expensive. It's like everything I've done or known to this point doesn't exist. Or else everything is completely fine and I'm thinking it's not.

If your fan is wider and you have the problem of more material on the top and bottom...can you add more fluid...open it up a few turns?

The LPH is going to sound different than the Devilbus...it's a different design. I would keep trying to set the gun up...don't paint on the car...use some paper on the wall....just a quick shot will tell you if the adjustment is improving...your not going to be wasting much paint and if you get it set up...you haven't wasted any.

I've stopped for the day because we have company coming over, but I'm still not 100% happy with it. Maybe most amateurs would be tickled with it, but that's exactly what it looks like...an amateur job (I think).

At the end of the day when I broke the LPH down, I took the tip off and a few of the holes were plug up with old paint. I'm hoping this might be why I felt like there was hardly any air coming through the gun. This is a gun that someone has lent me to use, so it's an old gun, gets used frequently. It did sound like a bigger air rush with trigger pulled after cleaning it out, but I"m not sure if that's just placebo effect.

Still have so tiger striping. My gun got knocked off the stand and spilled open, lost a bit of paint to the floor. Also my gun dripped three big drips on the trunk lid when I was spraying it. They came from the cup. I waited until the hood lid flashed off, and tried to wipe one of the drips away, but it left a big white spot which is going to be hell for me to cover now. I supposed I'll have to sand down the others.

I posted pics of the drips and some other pics of the car. Be as critical as you can to notice things, such as uneven spray, mottling, striping, etc, anything you can see. I see lots of things but not sure what is considered normal and what will come through when cleared.

On the plus side, not a single fish eye today and I'm hardly getting any trash in the finish.

It is improving Josh and wiping off a drip of wet base coat...well...every painter has had it happen...with the same results...we have all learned.

The pictures do look at better today than the last time and if you have plugged holes, not only will it reduce air and material flow, it will screw up your pattern. Take a break...tomorrows another day...give the gun a good cleaning and try again.

Very good advice Ray has given on gun adjustment and using masking paper to dial in that gun. You want a nice even cigar shaped pattern, keep adjusting before you go at the car. With that being said, this is a very difficult color to shoot even with a proper gun adjustment, because it is a somewhat transparent. And also keep in mind whatever mottling you see the clear will magnify it even more so. I have sprayed quite a few cars, my gun is in adjustment and I had a real tough time shooting a very similar color. Another trick I picked up may sound a bit strange, but it does work. While your sighting down the car for mottling, they show up a lot better when you have more light behind you as your facing the panels. In other words if your sighting down the quarter make sure that is in less light then the front of the car, and looking down the side that is in more darkness the lighter "spots" are much easier to see than with a lot of light on them. I know it does sound a bit crazy but the less light directly on the panel the more the mottling stands out.

I have a big roll of masking paper that hangs on the wall, and I pull it down for doing gun adjustment. I'm pretty sure I've got more paint going onto that masking paper than the car. I bet I went through 40-60 feet of paper today trying to find a good setting. When I get the cigar shape, the spray pattern is short, maybe only 7 inches tall, and there's still not a lot of paint coming out. I still didn't notice much improvement when taking this to the car.

Now I've always regarded mottling as uneven distribution of the metallic? I'm not getting that so much, but I am getting what looks to me like uneven spray. Unless you see differently?

Looking at the pics it seems that the gun is shooting spoty. It does not look like a nice even stroke of spray, but it is kind of hard not being right there looking at it. Does this gun seem worse or better than the previous one. If your getting a good pattern on the paper you should be as good on the car. If you hold the gun to the paper with about 5-6 inches away and give a full trigger pull it should start to run almost immediatly. If it takes a few seconds to start to run then your not getting enough paint out of the gun.

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